Game engines are becoming an increasingly competitive market. With all the most popular options such as Unity and GameMaker offering free versions of their software, Epic themselves have thrown their hats into the ring by announcing that Unreal Engine 4 will now be free too, along with any updates.

GDC is one of the key events in the gaming industry, so it’s always worthwhile to keep an eye on it for interesting nuggets. One of these comes from Mike Rose, formerly of Gamasutra and now of tinyBuild GAMES, who conducted an independent study on indie game sales, and some of the findings are surprising.

Harvesting the data from public sources as well as sales data provided directly by several independent developers, Rose has happened upon several interesting findings for those who presume to know which is the best platform for indies to consider. PC continues to hold pride of place, with games that have poor ratings, no marketing and no presence still cracking between 1000 and 10,000 sales on average and up to three million with massive YouTube exposure and “critical acclaim” from those other guys.

The ever-popular MMORPG World of Warcraft will soon be implementing new ways to pay for game time. Recently announced on Battle.net, a new item called the WoW Token will be introduced to the game. Hit the jump for news and chicken.

As much as I love roguelikes and roguelike-likes, I live in perpetual fear that the term is dangerously close to becoming a buzzword, much like “open world” and “procedural generation”. [I’m pretty sure this fear is already a reality. I’M SORRY. – Ed.] Still, I can’t help but have my interest perked at the prospect of a roguelike with Descent overtones, and that’s exactly what Sublevel Zero is shaping up to be.

Listen to all that shrieking? You can’t hear it? Just unplug your phone line from your router and stick it in your ear; you’ll hear the Internet shriekingand yelling because Valve has a presentation today at the Game Developers Conference.

That in itself isn’t much to get excited about, except for the fact that, you know, Valve (and HTC) has this Vive VR headset to show off today. The Internet, however, seems more excited about the timing of Valve’s presentation: it takes place at 3PM today, the third day of the third month. That’s THREE THREES. Half-Life 3 confirmed*.

Aside from gratuitous, over-the-top gore, there’s something else that NetherRealm gets absolutely right: really cheesy single-player campaign stories. The most recent offering, 2011’s Mortal Kombat, was festooned with fromage throughout its story, and that’s what made it all the more memorable. It looks like Mortal Kombat X will be keeping in that tradition.

NetherRealm and publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have released a story trailer for the game. In it you’ll see Cassie Cage (daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade) lead an assault on Outworld to remove Mileena and her rebel forces. There’s also a talisman thrown in for good measure, and Raiden sounding all foreboding and stuff. Yes! B-grade schlock is sometimes just the best.

The trailer also reveals some new characters, all of whom are the offspring of past characters:, Jax’s daughter Jacqueline Briggs makes an appearance, as does Takashi Takeda (son of Kenshi) and Kung Jin, who is a descendant of Kung Lao. Gosh, it’s a whole new generation of fighters for a new generation of gaming hardware – how apt. Hit the jump for the trailer.

As a gamer and overall nerd, nothing entranced me more than the early episodes of Star Trek with Captain Kirk and Spock. Though I had almost no access to the series in my hometown of Graaff-Reinet, I did watch some of the movies and caught parts of the series on VHS. You may not know it, but Star Trek and Leonard Nimoy’s character played such a big part in the childhood of so many people that parts of Spock’s personality were scattered into characters from other TV series or video games. Leonard Nimoy passed away on 27 February 2015 from complications arising from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to years of chain smoking habits early in his professional career.

It’s Monday, which means you’re likely on the hunt for something, ANYTHING that’ll make getting through this day more bearable. We’d offer you an uplifting trip to space, but we left our only spaceship in our other pants. Sorry.

Still, there are other ways to make this Monday less… Monday-ish. Follow us below if Free Things are exactly what you need right now.

We all knew this was happening thanks to Valve’s blasé announcement last week, but a Sunday reveal ahead of GDC has taken the Internet by surprise. Valve’s VR headset is called the Vive, and they have partnered with Taiwan-based, smart phone and tablet company HTC to bring it to market by the end of this year. Yep, we already have an expected release date for the consumer version of the Vive; that gives Valve and HTC a significant advantage over Oculus and their Rift, as well as Sony and their Project Morpheus; both Oculus and Sony have yet to provide a release date for their consumer versions.

So what’s in this thing? The hardware specs are, to be frank, really damn impressive. It features two 1200 x 1080 displays that refresh at 90 frames per second, essentially removing all concern of “jitter”.

More interesting however is Valve and HTC’s claim that the Vive provides a “full room-scale” VR experience. In other words, the Vive allows you to “get up, walk around and explore your virtual space, inspect objects from every angle and truly interact with your surroundings.” It does this through the inclusion of a “Steam VR base station”.